Liran Avisar Gazit explained that while the past 60 years have been spent trying to build the Jewish state in terms of infrastructure -- homes, roads and government agencies -- Zionism now means connecting Israel with American Jewry.

And her new job is to convince Reform Jews in particular to make aliyah and help diversify Israeli society.

"After 60 years," she insisted, "we have to change the face of Israel."

This, she stated, is what Zionism is all about today.

While Orthodoxy and secularism once provided Israeli citizens with the principle forms of Jewish identity open to them, Conservative Judaism and the Reform movement have sought a growing presence in the country over the past several decades.

In case of the latter, this is apparent in the growth of Reform kibbutzim and in the city of Modi'in, the ancient home of the Maccabees, whose mayor has welcomed Reform Jews there.

The Israel Conservative movement would benefit more from an affiliation with Israel's Reform movement than vice versa.

Jerusalem's prestigious Van Leer Institute dedicated a conference to "Contemporary Reform Judaism," the first serious academic symposium in Israel on a non-Orthodox religious stream of Judaism, which demonstrates that the Reform movement's profile is substantially more visible than the Conservative movement's.

The Conservatives hitch a ride on the Reform's Israel Religious Action Center, whose organizational activism makes it the chief proponent for equal rights for non-Orthodox religious branches of Judaism.

And while the Reform movement's Israeli rabbinic program has grown, the Conservative movement's has shrunk, with many Conservative rabbis employed by Reform institutions.

Ultimately then, a merger of the two movements would be advantageous, especially since the most liberal count of Israelis who consider themselves Reform or Conservative does not exceed a few thousand.

Why fight over essentially the same constituents by opening competing synagogues in the same cities and towns? Why have two educational campuses?

Many Israelis are facing crises of faith and are seeking answers to questions regarding the efficacy of a Jewish state that should reflect the best of Jewish moral values.

The two movements should pool their religious, educational and financial resources so that they might make an impact upon Israeli society, which is in need of alternative spiritual nourishment to Orthodoxy's rigidity and paternalism - an alternative that is creative, progressive, inclusive and responsive to the dramatic events that continually confront our country.

…I was wondering whether it would make sense to form a “single issue” Israeli NGO, focused completely on addressing the issues around the separation of church and state in Israel, and in particular those where principles of equality are compromised.

Do we need another NGO?

Bodies such as IRAC are doing a wonderful job of exposing and attempting to counter these abuses. IRAC has a much broader agenda, however, and its association with Reform Judaism may limit its appeal in some quarters.

I believe that a broad based, single issue NGO outside the political system may succeed where other organisations have failed.

In what was deemed an unprecedented move, an 18 year-old Jewish girl was sent to a rabbinical court in an attempt to convince her to cooperate with the secular Israeli judiciary in a criminal case.

The hearing on March 14 was marked by uncertainty over legal procedure.

Attorneys did not understand what role was given to the rabbinical court in a criminal case and whether the rabbis were granted any authority over the civil court judge who approved the procedure. Rabbinical courts are authorized to hear cases that concern marriage and divorce.

On March 14, Netanya Magistrates Court Judge Samdar Kolander Abramovitch issued a decision that allowed prison authorities to bring Tzvia, manacled in handcuffs and leg irons, to appear before the Rabbinical Court for Matters of the People and the State, in what was deemed an attempt to have rabbis influence Tzvia to cooperate with civil authorities.

Instead, the rabbis held a hearing on her case and issued a decision advocating her immediate release.

For several years, a revival of the concept of Avoda Ivrit – Jewish labor – has been taking place in the Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria regions – particularly in hilltop communities.

Though a web site listing Jewish labor businesses was closed down by the supreme court after a law-suit from an Arab advocacy group funded by the New Israel Fund, a new hotline and email account has been set up to provide Avoda Ivrit solutions.

The hotline allows consumers to receive a list of businesses in a particular field that only use Jewish workers. People are also encouraged to submit the names of such businesses to the hotline.

The hotline, for everything from gardeners, heavy equipment operators, painters, cement mixers and handymen to catering and restaurants…

In recent years the ultra-Orthodox community has been intensifying its use of financial pressure in order to lead to the closing of businesses on Saturday.

The scope of the consumer ban is of an extremely large scale, which could harm the commercial activity of 35 AM-PM stores, 45 branches of the Shefa Shuk supermarket (some of which specifically target the haredi audience) and dozens more businesses under the brands of Blue Square, Mega, Mega Ba'ir and the petrol company Dor Alon.

The committee of ultra-orthodox rabbis has made an announcement in the haredi press calling on the haredi public not to engage in business with the Alon Group, and supermarket chains Blue Square Israel and Shefa Shuk, because the AM:PM minimarket chain stays open for business on Sabbath. The Alon Group owns or controls all three chains.

In announcements published in "Yated Neeman" and "Hamodia" the committee of rabbis said "Attempts to reach agreement with the group owners to stop the public desecration of the Sabbath by AM:PM have failed.

The group has announced the opening of dozens more branches in cities on the holy Sabbath, and have already started doing so, and there are those who are following in their example, which will lead to the Sabbath being desecrated everywhere."

The announcement called on readers "not to have any business contacts with the aforementioned companies, including the use of gift vouchers and Kimcha Depascha (Passover charity) coupons for individuals and institutions."

Jerusalem Mayor Rabbi Uri Lupoliansky has been working to advance the project and allocated funding to set up a facility designed to teach students experientially.

Rabbi Uri Maklev, deputy mayor and chareidi education commissioner, spearheaded a project to bring a Shmittah study program presented by educator Rabbi Moshe Yarkoni to every primary school in the city.

About a dozen MKs, representing most of the Knesset factions, are expected to be active in the caucus, officials said.

Yesterday's launch brought together ministry representatives, as well as officials from the Jewish Agency, Nefesh B'Nefesh, and AMI, the French aliyah organization. Immigrant groups like the Association of Americans and Canadians in Israel (AACI) and Telfed, the South African Zionist Federation, were also present.

“There are more than eight million Jews in Western nations that we hope will make Aliyah to Israel,” Erdan said, opening the discussion.

“This hope does not differ inside or outside the coalition – whether on the right or the left. But there are obstacles and specific issues that we as Knesset Members hear about from individual olim and Aliyah organizations alike.

The purpose of this lobby is to identify where new legislation is needed to rectify those obstacles.”

Former Israeli Ambassador to the US Danny Ayalon, now the Chairman of the Nefesh B’Nefesh Aliyah organization said that Israel was founded on two principles, both necessitating establishing facts on the ground:

“The vision is to recognize and differentiate between Aliyah from the West and past waves of Aliyah.

What we have here is the recognition that the Zionist spirit is not passé. Jewish communities in America, Canada and UK are showing that if you thought that Jews only make Aliyah when they are in crisis – you are incorrect. Here are Jews from the fleshpots choosing to move to Israel.”

As part of the initiative to entice people to come back to Israel, a new government plan, developed jointly by the Immigrant Absorption and Finance ministries, seeks to dramatically lower taxes for olim and returnees.

ITIM - The Jewish Life Information Center[recently] testified before the State ombudsman on issues of conversions and burial, and has been invited by the Cabinet Secretary to convene a forum of Non-Governmental Agencies to facilitate the reorganization of the Conversion Authority.

To read about ITIM's Supreme Court case from the Jerusalem Report, click here.

The writer serves as Gwendolyn and Joseph Straus Fellow in Jewish Studies at Bar-Ilan University, where he is a lecturer and associate director in the Graduate Program in Contemporary Jewry and Senior Fellow at the Rappaport Center for Assimilation Research.

This article introduces two national religious-oriented (dati-le’umi) organizations that have emerged within Israeli society since the 1990s. Neither has openly called for the dismantling of the state rabbinate.

Nevertheless, they challenge central aspects of its hegemony over religious life.

Both are independent initiatives whose main mandate is to provide the average non-observant Israeli with an alternative address for religious guidance and services.

Beyond engendering a re-conceptualization of the nature of the rabbinate in Israel, the article suggests that these new frameworks offer a window into broader realignments that began to emerge at the turn of the twenty-first century both in regard to the relationship of the secular population to religion and within Israeli national religious Orthodoxy.

Falashmura seeking to immigrate to Israel from Ethiopia's Gondar region submitted numerous complaints about their treatment to State Comptroller Micha Lindenstrauss, who visited the area last week at the request of the Knesset State Control Committee.

Some Falashmura said they have waited more than 10 years to receive an answer to their application.

There has generally been only one consular official to handle thousands of applicants, they added, and the Interior Ministry has refused to consider the applications of some 8,500 people who, they claim, meet the government's criteria.

They also said the Israeli compound suffers from shortages of food and basic medical equipment, resulting in infant deaths.

Nevertheless, they challenge central aspects of its hegemony over religious life.

Both are independent initiatives whose main mandate is to provide the average non-observant Israeli with an alternative address for religious guidance and services.

Beyond engendering a re-conceptualization of the nature of the rabbinate in Israel, the article suggests that these new frameworks offer a window into broader realignments that began to emerge at the turn of the twenty-first century both in regard to the relationship of the secular population to religion and within Israeli national religious Orthodoxy.

The advertisements - which were plastered around every ultra-Orthodox neighborhood in Jerusalem - had prepared the ground for the main event by the Yad L'Achim organization in the city, and filled with anticipation the ultra-Orthodox women who packed the wedding-hall venue for "the story of a Jewish mother who was rescued with her two little children from an Arab village that will move you to tears," as the advertisement promised.

Although one can object to its vitriolic messages, Yad L'Achim's welfare project, in the form of shelters for battered women and women whose lives are threatened, should not be scorned.

The women whom the organization rehabilitates are explicitly victims of Arab husbands or partners, as though there were no ultra-Orthodox or even Jewish abusers in the world.

Modi'in Illit, considered the third largest Torah center in the country, was officially designated a city after Interior Minister Meir Shetreet approved a recommendation by Central Command Head Gen. Gadi Shamni to make the local council into a municipality.

Rabbi Yaakov Guterman, until recently head of the local council and now mayor, noted Modi'in Illit had already been functioning as a city before the change.

"The city's merit lies in the talmidei chachomim and the Torah and Chassidus institutions that grace it," he said.

The writer is a haredi feminist, freelance author and volunteer at www.jewishgen.org/ where she 'mans' the support desk for the Jewishgen General Discussion Group.

My letter to the editor of February 22, about the rubbed-out photos of women on www.ladaat.net has been the focus of some debate in my hometown of Efrat

To recap, my letter stated that women do not need to see photos of other women to attain greatness.

Those in my community who agreed with this position understood that my intention was not to encourage the wholesale censorship of women's photos from all media. Rather, I find that this practice is of little consequence to a woman's sense of self.

In truth, I am certain that my daughters would not take offense at a display of photos doctored in such a manner.

They understand what these altered photos represent: a communal effort for spiritual attainment. My girls would understand that someone is trying to empower them.

Muslim recipients of supplementary income will be able to leave Israel for 23 days to observe the hajj (pilgrimage to Mecca) commandment without losing their stipends, Social Affairs Minister Isaac Herzog said this week.

Until now pilgrims who failed to report to the Employment Service for two weeks or longer lost their allowances.

Pilgrims from Israel must travel thousands of kilometers via Jordan to Saudi Arabia and back.

Religion and State in Israel

March 17, 2008 (Section 2) (continued from Section 1)

Editor – Joel Katz

Religion and State in Israel is not affiliated with any organization or movement.

Non-Jews who immigrate to Israel under the Law of Return and wish to convert to Judaism will not be required to maintain an Orthodox lifestyle after the conversion, cabinet secretary Ovad Yehezkel has told The Jerusalem Post.

"The process of conversion is strictly in accordance with Halacha," said Yehezkel.

"But as soon as you enter the world of Judaism, the decision regarding your personal Jewish lifestyle is up to you.

Nobody is going to force you to continue to be Orthodox. There is no directive like that."

"I want all 350,000 to say to themselves, 'The state wants us to go through this process; the state is interested in my being a Jew; the state wants to make it easy for me; the state wants it to be done in a friendly manner,'"

Yehezkel says in an interview he initiated to get this message across.

But make no mistake about it, Yehezkel stresses, the process for those who do convert will be 100 percent halachic.

Why? - he is asked.

"Because Halacha is the mechanism that preserved the existence of this people for 3,000 years. That is a code that is impervious to every threat. The state has no intention of annulling that code. Its intention is to preserve it, develop and sanctify it. That needs to be clear. This state is the place where a Jew will become a Jew according to Halacha."

Yehezkel tiptoes through the minefield of whether Reform and Conservative conversions should be accepted here by saying that these are theoretical questions that - if focused upon - would detract the government from its main goal: getting as many of the immigrants interested in a conversion process as possible.

Rabbi Shaul Farber, head of ITIM, a non-profit organization that helps potential converts navigate rabbinic bureaucracy, said in response that the appointment of the judges would probably not do much to improve the way conversions are performed in Israel.

"I don't believe that the main pitfall is the ineffectiveness of the judges," said Farber. "There are so many problems that potential converts encounter the second they begin the conversion and long before they ever make it to the conversion court."

"I don't think there is a person in Israel that can honestly say he is innocent of the crime we committed when we did not do enough to embrace Ethiopian Jewry."

Amar said that he was taking steps to train Ethiopian rabbis to serve their communities.

Farber also rejected the idea that the authority needed to appoint haredi judges to give itself legitimacy.

"The judges that serve on the conversion courts are the cream of the religious Zionist community. They don't need the approbation of the haredi Right."

Descriptions of Mercaz Harav - along the lines of its being "the flagship of religious Zionism" - were apt in the 1970s and '80s, when indeed this yeshiva did shape religious Zionism.

But today, when religious Zionism is split into many streams and offshoots, and after even this yeshiva itself experienced a dramatic split about a decade ago - there is neither one single key personality, nor one single central institution that shapes the spirit of all of religious Zionism. Not even Mercaz Harav.

“It is a central place because it is a symbol of religious Zionism, and so it feels like we have been attacked personally,” Weider said.

“It feels like everything has changed. They [the terrorists] knew the meaning of Mercaz Harav, and they wanted to show that the power is in their hands. But as one of the rabbis said, nothing will shatter us, we will not let this break us.”

Rabbi Rafi Feuerstein, a member of Tzohar, and himself a graduate of the Mercaz Harav Yeshiva:

"There is a feeling of hurt among the religious Zionists today, and it exists on three levels," says Feuerstein.

"First, inside this society, which, although it is by no means small, is very close - everybody knows everybody, and it makes it into a kind of a large family. This makes the burden of the mourning heavier in some ways; every drama touches everyone."

Second, "hurting Mercaz [Harav] also hurt the heart of the community. All the people who come from this world and hold the highest positions in society - whether in the army, academia, the yeshiva or the political world - they all started there.

We have learned nothing from the rift in this nation after the murder of prime minister Yitzhak Rabin. The left has learned nothing, just as the religious sector. This is the main conclusion from the acrimonious public debate after last week's terrorist attack at the Mercaz Harav yeshiva in Jerusalem.

If this attack continues to be used as a political tool, it will become a terrorist attack on religious people. That would be sad and unnecessary.

Among the signatories to the street notice were Rabbi Yaakov Yosef, son of Shas spiritual leader Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, Rabbi Ido Elba, who was sentenced to a two-year prison term for incitement to racism, Rabbi Gadi Ben-Zimra, the rabbi of the Orthodox high school where girls who were arrested refused to recognize the court's authority.

Several right-wing rabbis, including the son of Shas party’s spiritual leader, Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, published circulars appearing in Jerusalem and West Bank settlements calling on followers to “fight the enemy tit for tat and blow for blow. They have no compassion for us, so we must feel none for them”.

"This was an attack on Torah, and yet because of how the nation is relating to the attack and how most of the media is presenting it, it's showing what the Torah really means to religious people and what it could possibly mean to someone who is not religious," she says.

But what the leaders of the religious settlement movement failed to realize at the time was that the same state power that could be put to use by them had a will of its own that also could turn against them.

This was what happened in the disengagement from Gaza in 2006, bitterly opposed by the "national religious" community, and it is what is threatening to happen on a much larger scale in the West Bank.

Today, this community, particularly its youth, feels betrayed and abandoned by the secular state it once championed, and increasingly alienated from it.

Dr. Ruth Halperin-Kaddari, 41, an expert on family law and head of Bar-Ilan University's Ruth and Emanuel Rackman Center for the Advancement of the Status of Women, and Israel's delegate to the UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women.

Halperin-Kaddari is a religious woman who has spent more than a decade fighting the religious establishment over women's rights.

Where family law is concerned, she claims, not only has there been no progress on behalf of women in the last few years, matters have actually taken a turn for the worse.

"I am more pessimistic than I used to be. In the last two to three years, the bills submitted to the Knesset have been more radical in terms of religion.

My doctoral dissertation dealt with legal pluralism, but here in Israel there is absolute coercion."

The Israel Religious Action Center, which petitioned the High Court over this issue, demanded that a special committee be appointed to discuss the arrangements regarding the "kosher lines." Keren clarifies that Kolech's stance is different and that she strongly opposes such an arrangement.

"A public company like Egged is forbidden, in principle, to lend its hand to this discrimination, which constitutes a kind of 'apartheid' behavior within the State of Israel. Every person is entitled to use the public transportation freely as he or she sees fit," she said.

According to Keren, this phenomenon could lead to incidents in which non-Jews would be forced to sit in segregated seats, and would even be banned from traveling on the buses altogether.

"Those historic affairs have yet to be forgotten. Israel must not serve as a platform for similar discrimination, this time on a gender basis," she concluded.

In the last few years, I've declined to react to the nonsense spewed by various Shas representatives regarding matters of current interest.

The reason I decided to deviate from my practice and to respond this time stems from legislation involving the screening of Internet sites that has passed its first reading in the Knesset.

Submitted by MK Amnon Cohen of Shas, the bill will not prevent Internet access to those who desire hard-core pornography, but it will definitely give the communications minister, who at the moment also happens to be from Shas, the power to order Web providers to make accessing such content more difficult.

You don't have to go as far as Satmar to notice the changes in the official internal discourse - as opposed to the ultra-Orthodox public, which reacted with profound shock - to the attack in Jerusalem and the identity of its victims.

The official ultra-Orthodox hashkafa (religious perspective) has been conducting a longstanding debate with what the "Mercaz" represents, and always considered it a "half-baked yeshiva."

In light of this, the wording of Friday's main headline in the ultra-Orthodox daily Yated Neeman: "8 yeshiva boys were murdered in a shooting attack at the Mercaz Harav yeshiva in Jerusalem" was significant. The word "yeshiva" appeared. Twice.

However, the ultra-Orthodox reactions should also be understood in light of what is happening in the street: the "Israelization" of the ultra-Orthodox community, and the tendency among the religious public to become more ultra-Orthodox.

A small group of ultra-Orthodox extremists has been intimidating fellow Jews who they deem to be not kosher or modest enough, or who don't keep the Sabbath the way they want them to.

Last summer, community members started a group that's trying to narrow the religious and cultural divide through dialogue. Organizers say they have made some progress, but both sides acknowledge the goal of the dialogue, in the end, is not wider integration but a kind of peaceful segregation.

"If they want to be the way they want [and] we want to be the way we want, we can't put them together," says David, a 25-year-old ultra-Orthodox who studies Torah full time, "because it's two different things — it's two different worlds."

"According to Jewish law, it is completely forbidden to hire Arabs, especially in yeshivas; there is a concern of endangering lives,” Rabbi Chaim Kanievsky, considered a top Torah sage of the generation in the haredi-religious community, said Sunday.

Israel Defense Force officers are in contact with representatives of the ultra-Orthodox public to raise the number of religious youths serving in the army and to lower the number of those deferring service for yeshiva study.

A senior officer in the IDF Human Resources Branch said yesterday the goal is to reduce the number of those not serving to only 5 percent.

Today over 11 percent of those eligible for military service do not enlist for such reasons, though this percentage represents almost all of the draft-age ultra-Orthodox youth.

The IDF reports it is inducting 800 soldiers in the special hesder yeshiva program, where they alternate between periods of army service and religious studies;

According to the Human Resources officer, there is also a trend of growing numbers of enlistees joining ultra-Orthodox Nahal Haredi battalion, and the IDF is considering establishing another battalion in a similar framework…

Recruiting more religious women is another goal, and the matter is under discussion with various sectors of the religious Zionist streams to bring more religious women into the IDF.

"Right-wing religious people think that parties with progressive, non-fundamentalist views are anti-religious," Waimann said. "But Meretz views religious practice as completely integral to the State of Israel.

The fact that they put a haredi woman, Tzvia Greenfield, at No. 6 on their list shows that they are pluralistic and comfortable with people of a religious bent."

All told, this is yet another very wealthy Jew, who is preaching about how to be Jewish.

But unlike religious Jewish politicians who use the religion as interpreted by their rebbes to extract monies from state coffers, Leviev invests his own capital in projects aimed at ensuring that his view of Judaism prevails.

What Leviev sees as Judaism is the Jewish religion - pure, and not simple. But freedom of religion, even for Jews, is also the freedom not to be religious.